Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Welcome back. Like fusion power, quantum computing is a revolutionary technology that has been in the works for a long time — and perhaps always will be. But top tech figures are now starting to expect that the technology will move from its experimental phase to serious commercial use “not in decades . . . but in years”, as Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella put it last month.These hopes could of course be dashed — but it’s still worth building an understanding of the world-altering potential of this technology. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the head of one of the world’s most prominent quantum computing companies, who argues that the quantum age will be with us much sooner, and with much more profound consequences for human welfare, than most of us realise. Buckle up.The uncertain promise of the quantum era“If you think you understand quantum mechanics,” the legendary physicist Richard Feynman famously remarked, “you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”The quip fairly reflects the head-spinning complexity of this field of science, which shows how the universe, at the subatomic level, breaks all the physical rules we’ve learned from observing the world around us.Yet Feynman was also the first to suggest how the science of quantum mechanics could be put to powerful effect, to build computers with near-godlike processing capacity. For most of the 44 years since Feynman’s seminal paper on quantum computing, it had looked like an intriguing area of science with no foreseeable prospect of moving beyond the experimental stage.But in the past few months, a flurry of high-profile announcements by Big Tech giants has stoked expectations that quantum computers may soon be much more than an academic curiosity. Among technology industry leaders, the debate is no longer whether quantum computers will reach commercial deployment, but when.“I think the world is not quite prepared, and not thinking deeply enough about it,” said Jeremy O’Brien, chief executive of PsiQuantum, the most deeply funded quantum computing company taking on the likes of Google and Microsoft.The commercial deployment of quantum computing would have a game-changing effect across much of the modern world — but especially for challenges around climate change, health and food security, O’Brien argued.How it worksO’Brien and his rivals are aiming to harness one of the most mind-bending aspects of quantum mechanics: the “superposition” of subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.Conventional computers represent data using “bits”: ones and zeros, processed through silicon transistors that function as electronic on-off switches.In contrast, quantum computers use subatomic particles to create “qubits”. According to quantum mechanics, an electron (if not actively observed) is neither in one place nor another, but has a certain probability of being in each. Similarly, a qubit is neither one nor zero, but has a mathematical possibility of being either.The science is too complicated to explain fully here (check out this brilliant FT visual explainer, and this equally good FT podcast series, if you’re curious to know more). Suffice to say that, in theory, quantum computers would be able to perform, in minutes, some operations that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers many millions of years.So great is the disparity with conventional hardware that “it’s unhelpful to think about quantum computing as a more powerful computer”, O’Brien told me. “I’m on the verge of saying that I think it’s unhelpful to think about it as a computer at all.”PsiQuantum has raised $665mn from investors including BlackRock, Baillie Gifford and Temasek, as well as a $617mn investment last year from the Australian government. It’s building, near Brisbane, what it says will be the world’s first “utility-scale” quantum computer, with a target of switching it on in 2027. Designed to be scaled up to a million qubits, it would be orders of magnitude more powerful than those already developed by others, which have performed mathematical calculations with limited real-world utility.What to do with itPotentially the most important application of quantum computing, O’Brien said, would be in modelling the behaviour of complex molecules to a level that’s impossible using even the most powerful conventional computers. That could have powerful consequences for human health, he argued, by enabling the development of precisely targeted new drugs with unprecedented efficacy and minimal side-effects.Future beneficiaries of that science, he suggested, might consider it “kind of crazy that we’re willing to put [medicines] into our bodies when we don’t really know how they function”.Another crucial application, O’Brien said, could be in removing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to tackle climate change. While several companies have developed systems to do this, the cost remains prohibitive — but it might be reduced dramatically if quantum computers could be used to identify the perfect substance to use for carbon absorption.There could be big implications for global food security too, he said, with the promise of more effective, less polluting fertilisers.The road aheadPsiQuantum’s investors would do well to keep the champagne on ice. The inherent fragility of any system relying on subatomic particles makes this a fearsome engineering challenge, even if PsiQuantum claims that its system, with qubits built around photons rather than electrons, will be more robust than that of its rivals.And those rivals are an intimidating crowd. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all announced significant advances in their own quantum computing efforts in the past four months. Last week, US start-up D-Wave claimed its quantum computer had solved a problem too complex for any conventional system to tackle, sending its share price surging.Despite these advances, some top technology names have recently poured cold water on the near-term prospects for this sector. Jensen Huang, chief executive of chip powerhouse Nvidia, in January said he thought truly useful quantum computers were still 15 to 30 years away. That followed a claim by Demis Hassabis, the Nobel-winning founder of Google DeepMind, that artificial intelligence running on conventional computers might be able to handle problems long thought to be addressable only by quantum computers.And then there are the risks. Quantum computers could penetrate the encryption that secures the internet and many of the systems that underpin the modern world — potentially opening a dangerous new avenue of cyberwarfare.But if PsiQuantum or one of its rivals can defy the doubters to build a quantum computer that functions reliably and at scale, this might yet create an important new range of opportunities for tackling humanity’s most urgent challenges. “It’s about solving problems that are otherwise forever impossible to solve,” O’Brien said.Smart readsNo quick fix Artificial intelligence developers are promising that “frugal AI” practices will address the sector’s swelling carbon footprint. Is this realistic?End of the road Filmmaker Richard Curtis’s Make My Money Matter campaign, aimed at encouraging the public to push for greener pension schemes, has closed after five years.Sweet deal The head of the obesity programme at the world’s largest philanthropic organisation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, works as a paid adviser to chocolate maker Ferrero.
